Hello, everybody, this is Pastor Rick's Daily Hope. Thank you so much
for joining us today, and if you're brand new, welcome to the Daily
Hope family. We hope you'll enjoy the teachings of Pastor Rick Warren right here.
I'm so excited for all of you to learn about your shape. It
might not be the shape you're thinking of right now. Rick loves to use
acrostics and this one is shape your shape, your spiritual gifts, heart,
abilities, personality and experiences. And one of the reasons I love this series
and have shared it with so many friends is because Rick talks about the way
God wired you and why you need not just know your shape, but how
to use it to do the things that God designed you to do. So
let's jump right in. Here's Rick with the final part of a message called
Unwrapping your Spiritual Gifts. Now there are no little people in the Family of
God. Part every role is important. How can you say, well,
you know, fingernail is not important on a body. Ever lost a fingernail?
Hurts? Okay, every part is necessary. Do you know what the
most important light is in my house? It's not the big chandelier in the
dining room. It's that little dinky light I turn on every night so that
when I get up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night,
I don't stub my toe. You know what, it doesn't you know?
When I always say the most important light is that little night light.
Tom always says, Rick, you're lyon because the most important light in the
house to use the one that when you open the refrigerator door, it comes.
Yeah. Okay, look at this verse up here on the screen.
The Bible says this. Each of us finds our meaning. You need to
know the meaning of your life. Each of us finds our meaning and function
in life as a part of his body. Other words, you're only gonna
find it when you get connected to others in his family, God's family.
But as a chopped off finger or cut off toe, we wouldn't amount too
much, would we. So since we find ourselves fashion that's shaped into these
excellently formed or shaped and marvelously functioning parts of Christ's body, let's just go
ahead and be what we're made to be, without enviously or pridefully comparing ourselves
with each other, trying to be something we aren't. It's just gonna give
up the charade, give up the faking, and give up the phoniness.
Stop pretending. Just be what God made you to be. Why Because God
says when you do that, it shapes your work and it shows your worth.
There's a third thing why you need to know your spiritual gifts because they
share your worship. They share your worship. What I mean by that when
you do you use the gifts that God has given you, it is actually
an act of worship. What is it that makes God smile? Some people
think God only smiles when you're praying or singing or going to church. God
smiles when you use the gifts that He's given you. And when you're doing
what you were wired to do and shape to do, and you're good at
it and it feels good, God goes, that's so cool. I made
them to do that. Remember in Chariot's a Fire, that guy Eric Little,
the Runner, said I was made by God to run, and he
said, when I run, I feel God's pleasure. God shaped some guys
to surf. They're just good at it. And I think when God looks
at me, he's going, that is so cool. I made the waves.
I made the surfer. Look at this this is cool. You don't
have to always be doing something spiritual. Quote. But God says, I'm
going to take the gifts that I've given you, and when you use them,
it is actually an active worship. I look down and going, they're
doing it. He's doing it. He's doing it. He's being what I
made him to be. And that's exactly what It's an act of worship,
and that gives God glory. The Bible says this next verse, when you
produce much fruit, this is Jesus talking, My Father is honored and glorified.
Now, when you use your gifts correctly, God gets glory. When
you don't use them, God doesn't, and you certainly can't please God with
gifts you don't have. God doesn't expect you to be talented or gifted at
everything. He just wants you to use what he's given you. You know
that in the word in the Bible, the word joy and the word gift
actually come from the same Greek words. It's car it's from chorus. It's
the word for grace because joy and giftedness goes together. When you use your
spiritual gifts, it brings joy to God and it brings joy to you.
God goes, They're doing what I made him to do, and you go,
this feels good. The greatest feeling in the world is to use your
gifts for God's purpose because it works and you know it and you enjoy it.
It is the greatest thrill in the world being used by God. It's
greater than sex. And if you haven't ever felt that, I pity you.
You need to develop the spiritual gifts that are in you so you can
enjoy what. There's no feeling in the world like being used by God.
Knowing what He made me to be. I'm being, I'm doing. There's
a fourth reason why you need to know your gifts because they shine your witness.
What do you mean by that, Rick Well, Jesus said this in
Matthew five sixteen. Let your light shine in front of people. Then they'll
see the good that you do, that's the stuff you're shaped to do,
and they will praise your Father in heaven. You see when you use your
spiritual gift and not only makes God happy, makes you happy. It's a
witness to other people. It's a testimony to other people. Sometimes you think,
well, this thing called evangelism, what is evangelism? You've heard that
word. Evangelism just means sharing good news. It's a Greek word. It
means to share the good news. And sometimes people say evangelism that means I
got to be an evangelist. It means I got to go out and,
you know, do something that doesn't feel good to me to do. And
sometimes you hear about these people. It seems like everywhere they go they're introducing
people to Jesus. Every time they sit down on a plane. By the
time the plane lands, the whole planes accepted the Lord, you know,
and you go. That never happens to me. I never lead anybody to
Christ. Why because you're not using your shape. There are as many ways
to tell the good news to people, to share Jesus with others as there
are shapes in the world, spiritual gifts and abilities and heart and personality experiences.
There are a million different ways to share the good news. You don't
have to do it all in the same way. Mark used to be on
staff at Willow Creek Community Church. And don't hold him against him that his
best friend has least struggle, but give him a warm welcome thanks suck Well.
I love the theme of the service because I think one of the greatest
dangers in the church is that we take on an attitude that says one shape
fits all. And I think if there's any area in which that is dangerous,
it's this area of fitness or personal evangelism, because we tend to have
a stereotypical image in our minds of what that would look like, and it's
usually a very hard, bold, you know, hard hitting, confrontational style,
sometimes even a little bit obnoxious, and we think, well, that's
not me. And just let you know I can relate to that concern.
Let me just tell you a story. I went a number of years ago
over to England. I signed up kind of naively for a summer tour of
duty, without quite knowing what I was getting into. And I showed up.
I was all green, I was all enthusiastic and boy, what are
we gonna do? And I met the team captain and this guy was just
a little bit too enthusiastic, because I said what are we gonna do?
He said, I'm glad you asked, oh, okay, well what are
we gonna do? And he said, We're gonna go out every morning early,
We're gonna knock on doors, We're gonna tell people about Jesus. I
said all day. He said it's gonna be great. That, oh boy,
sounds great. And I was just wrestling with this because I knew this
is not my sheep, this is not what God meane this. I don't
have the temperament for knocking on doors of strangers. In fact, let me
just tell you something. Maybe you're not aware of this, but Americans fresh
out of Heathrow Airport in London, England, knocking on doors of strangers to
tell them about Jesus is not a real popular thing in British culture. They
didn't swing the door open and say, ah, Americans, Jesus great,
tell me you know. They didn't do that. It wasn't like that.
It was more like, what are you doing here? Oh you're from America?
When are you going back? They did not want to talk to us
in most cases, and it was tough. And I got through the first
day and I said, got through that. You know, what are we
doing tomorrow? He said, I'm glad you asked. We're going out again?
And it's like, shut up, you know, But we did this,
and we did it day after day for count them eight weeks. That
was my response too. And when it was over, I went home and
I said, that's it. It's over. I'm done with this evangelism thing.
This is not me. It does not fit who I am. It's
not what God designed me to do. And so next time someone gets all
fired up and tries to recruit someone for an evangelistic tour of duty or adventure
somewhere, I'm just going to look him in the eye and say, look,
I've done my time. I already did that. So you know,
look, i'll pray for you when you go, I'll support you, you
know all write a check to help meet the expenses. But don't ask me
to do this. This is not my deal. Now, you may find
it funny as I did, and I think God did that. A year
after deciding this is not my deal, I was hired as the director of
evangelism at this large church in Chicago full time. This is what I'm going
to do. And the question is what happened? You know what in your
thinking, And let me tell you what it was. I went to a
church service at that church and heard the pastor get up and teach from the
Bible. And what he taught was, you know, one shape does not
fit all when it comes to sharing your faith, that you don't have to
force yourself in a mold that doesn't fit you. In fact, he held
up the Bible and he said, I got good news. Even in the
pages of the scriptures, there's a diversity of approaches. And that was good
news to me that day. And then he went on to teach, and
I want to just click through the examples he gave, and I hope that
this would be liberating to you the way it was to me, Because if
you're a follower of Christ, you like I, are called to share your
faith. The question is how are you going to do it? So let
me give you some examples. See if you don't relate to some of these,
let me give you the first one. I'm going to come over here
to Jerusalem, and this is Acts chapter two, the Day of Pentecost,
and the person here is Peter. And he stood up and he took the
confrontational approach to evangelism, which means very direct, very bold. Here's what
he did. He said, look, God sent his Messiah, you killed
him, and you're in big trouble capital ce confrontation. I'm very bold and
direct, but God used it and if you know the story, three thousand
people were cut to the quick and that day became followers of Christ. And
the point is Peter was being Peter. He was being who God shaped him
to be, and God used it. And here's the other point. Some
of you are like Peter. You're very direct, you're hard hitting, you
like to make a point, and God can use you in a powerful way.
Now this is not my style, but it is the one God used
to reach me when I was nineteen years old. And I'd just like to
unleash those of you with this style to reach people for Christ. Now,
don't hurt people, but spread the message. Now let me give you a
second example. I'll come over here to Athens, Greece, to the philosophers
and the crowd, and now I'm Paul, and now we're in Act seventeen.
And Paul took the intellectual style. He reasoned with them, He presented
lodg in evidence to show them, to prove to them that Christianity is true.
And that was natural to Paul. That was his shape. And God
used that and a bunch of those philosophers ended up becoming followers of Jesus as
a result of that. Intellectual style, and some of you, like Paul,
can reason and use logic to show people that Christianity is true. And
I hope there's a bunch of you, because really, out of the six
styles, this is the most important of all the styles. Really, this
is the most godly of all the styles. Really, this is my style
too. So all right, maybe it's not the most important style, but
it is a very important one. We live in a secular culture that wants
to know why we believe what we believe. And some of you can reach
people with answers, and that's your style, that's your shape. I love
the third one. It's the testimonial, and it's the man who was blind.
That Jesus healed the blind man in John chapter nine, and here he
is, all of a sudden on trial for his faith. And I love
what he did. He didn't want to give a bunch of logic or confront
He just did what was natural to him. He said, look, here's
what I know. I used to be blind. Now I can see deal
with it, right, What are you gonna argue with my experience? You
know, God healed me, and Jesus did it, and you got to
look into him as well, by the way, this is really Lee Strobel's
main style. Look. I used to be an atheist, a newspaper reporter.
I was skeptical. Now I've been changed and I know what's true.
Deal with it. It's a powerful approach, and some of you, many
of you, can use your stories in the same way. The third example
is Matthew the tax collector. I love what he did because you know,
he's thinking, you know, I can't do what those other guys do.
How can I reach my friends? Oh? I know how to do is
throw a good party. And then he said, wait a minute, I'll
throw a different kind of a party, a party with a purpose. Luke
five point twenty nine says that he invited his tax collecting buddies along with Jesus
and the disciples, and it was an inner personal approach to evangelism. It
deepened relationships and God uses that and a lot of you can throw good parties
and have people over for a meal and get together and warm it up and
then share in an interpersonal way, and that's a powerful approach. The fifth
example is the Samaritan woman. This is John chapter four. Jesus comes in.
You know, he draws the water talks about living water, has her
draw the water, starts sharing with her, tells her he's the Messiah,
and then she runs up the hill to her town in Samaria and grabs everyone
she knows. And if you know the story, she knew pretty much everyone.
And she grabs them and she brings them down. She says, there's
a secret service happening down at the well. Jesus is speaking this week.
Come on down, and they all come, and a bunch of those people
her friends from Samaria become Christians. And history tells us that's how the church
in Samaria began was through her invitational approach. Some of you have that style,
and I just want to say all of you can use that one.
The sixth example was a woman named Tabitha, Acts Chapter nine. She made
articles of clothing as acts of loving service done in the name of Christ,
kind of a first century mother Teresa. And she just loved and served people
in ways that made people look to Heaven and say, there must be a
God to express love like he does through her. And God used that serving
to reach people. In fact, it was so important that when that woman
died, Dorcas ser Tabitha, as she was called when she died, God
sent an apostle to pray over her and raise her back to life and put
her back into service. So you see there are advantages to having this style.
It's a pretty cool deal. And some of you have that approach,
and through your acts of service, God uses you to pull people toward the
Savior. Well, let me just sum this up and say, you know,
one shape does not fit all, and if you could just relax and
find your own shape and learn to communicate your faith to family and friends in
a way that fits you, there's no telling how God would use it.
And let me just sum it up with a story real quick. A friend
of mine named Julie. She's really my hero and evangelism more than some of
the famous names that you can think of, Billy Graham or Greg Laurie.
I love those guys. But Julie one of the quietest, shyest, most
introverted people I've ever met. And when she first asked me how to share
her faith and how she could reach her husband, you know, I would
tell her, and she was so shy, she'd barely look me in the
eye, and then she just looked down and take notes. But I kept
cheering, you know, trying to encourage her, trying to coach her,
and she got bolder. She found her shape, She found that she was
the interpersonal style, and she began to reach out in natural ways to her
husband and family. And it wasn't too long before her husband came to Christ,
and then her two teenage daughters made commitments, and then some of her
nephews and neighbors. And get this, in one year, shy, quiet
and shy and introverted Julie in one year helped lead sixteen people to become followers
of Jesus Christ. Isn't that great? And I just want to tell you,
I just want to say, if God can use Julie, he can
use you to make an eternal impact on the people around you. If you'll
discover your shape and work through the design God gave you, He'll use you
beyond your imagination. So go for it, God bless He's ready for it.
So how do you start using the gifts to God put inside of you?
Four things? Write them down real quick. Number one, you got
to discover them. You got to know what they are for you can use
them. You got to stop neglecting the fact that inside of you are some
dormant gifts that you're not even using. The Bible says in one Timothy four
fourteen, do not neglect the spiritual gift that is inside you. That's in
you. You got to figure out what God has put in you. Now,
how do you discover your spiritual gifts? Things you examine, evaluate and
experiment. Examine, evaluate, and experiment. This is how you decide and
discover what you're good at. First, you examine. That means you study
spiritual gifts. We're going to do that during this next five six weeks in
Shape. If you're not in a small group, you need to get in
a small group because this material is not being shared on Sunday morning. It's
material on how to understand your Shape's curriculum and Bible study. You need to
get in a small group. The second thing you do is you evaluate what
you're good at. And here's how you do that. You ask other people,
what do you think I'm good at? Yeah, ask other people what
do you think I'm good at? Because other people will recognize your giftedness before
you do. There are certain things you do well you don't even know you're
good at them because you think you're naturally, you think, it's naturally that
everybody thinks that way, acts that way, feels the way they don't.
Other people will recognize your spiritual gifts before you do. It is in their
affirmation that you learn your spiritual gifts. Would I could have gone one hundred
years of my life and never known that I was gifted at teaching because I'd
never done it. And you know, I had to go out and I
had to the only way I could do is evaluate. And when one time,
years and years ago, I was invited to speak at my small group
and there were like five six people in the room and we sat in the
room and I spoke in nice too. They said that was pretty good,
Rick. And then later I got invited again to speak to our small group
to lead the group, and I go, hey, that was good.
That helped me. And then a little while later I got invited to speak
to about fifteen guys and this little we were going on this backpacking thing,
camping thing together, and I spoke to them and people start saying, you
know, Rick, when you speak, God blesses it. Now, I
would have never known that I had the spiritual gift the teaching because I had
never done it. If you're not involved in anything, you don't know what
you're good at because you've never tried it. And so you evaluate and you
say, what is God blessed in my life? What do other people say
God bless us? What do I feel good at when I do it?
And I'm good at it when I do it? Now, as I said,
if you're not involved in anything, you're not going to know. That's
why the third thing is experiment. You just have to go out and try
stuff. I don't think you're ever going to learn your spiritual gift just by
taking a test. There are all kinds of tests you can go out there
and take, And actually I took one when I was a teenager on trying
to discover what my giftedness was spiritual gift, And the only thing the test
came up with is that I had the gift of martyrdom. Oh great martyrdom.
That's the gift you get to use one time in your life, but
it's over, okay, and you only get to use your spiritual gift the
last second of your life. The only thing I came up was I was
willing to die for my faith. Okay, big deal. It wasn't until
I start trying stuff and just try different things. That's not me, that's
not me. Oh I really like doing that, and I'm good at it.
And then you know where you're gifted. You know, when I first
start feeling that God was calling me to serve him full time, I actually
started out not as a pastor a preacher. I started out leading worship.
Yeah, I was the skinny guy with long hair and guitar. And because
I led worship and probably oh about fifty churches, oh, different places,
you know, on one shot here, one shot there. And I love
to sing. I really have a heart for singing. The only problem was
nobody liked to hear me. Now, if you're you got a heart for
something and you think you're good at it, but nobody else thinks you're good
at it, it's not your gift. Okay, just be honest and realize
you're not gifted at that. And if three people tell you you're a duck,
you're a duck. Okay, doesn't matter how good you think you are,
that's not your gift. And so you just need to be brutally honest,
have a sane evaluation, not less of yourself, not more of yourself.
This is what God wired me to be. And so you evaluate,
you examine your experiment, and you try all different kinds of things. Some
of you are sitting here one I'm waiting for God to tell me what he
wants me to do with my life. It ain't gonna happen. You cannot
steer a parked car. Write that one down. You know, our brilliant
pastor said, you cannot steer a parked car. No, you got to
be moving, and if you're moving, God can steer you. So just
get out there, volunteer for something, anything, Just start using your life
to help other people, and God will steer you in the right. And
you're actually just don't wait because it's not going to fall on you like that.
So you discover them. The second thing you do is you dedicate them.
You dedicate your gifts back to God. The Bible says this in Romans
six. Give yourselves completely to God since you've been given new life. In
other words, he gave you all these gifts, and use your whole body
as a tool to do what is right for the glory of God. Now
some of you you already know what you're good at. It's no big surprise.
You know what you're good at. You're just not using it for the
Lord. You're using it for yourself. And what you need to do is
want you to know what you're good at, you need to dedicate it to
God. God. I'm good at this. I'm dedicating it to you.
God, I'm good at that. I'm dedicating that to you. And the
reason and why you're not using for God is you're too busy, or you're
lazy, or you're making excuses or you have a fear of failure. Push
all those excuses out of the way, and to say, God, I
dedicate what you gave to me back to you. Third thing you do is
you develop your gifts. You discover them and then you dedicate them and then
you develop them. Now, gifts are like muscles. The more you use
it, the bigger it gets, and the more the more it develops,
you can strengthen and develop and you can grow what God has given you.
Any gift that God gives you should can and should be developed. And you
have a gift of teaching. It doesn't. No gift comes fully developed.
It comes into your life in a certain way, and the more you use
it, like a muscle. The more it develops, you get better at
it and better at it and better at it how by practice, by learning,
by studying, by learning from other people who have the same gift,
and as you practice it you get better and better. Let me give you
a little secret. I've learned this personally. When God gives you something,
if you use it well, he gives you more of it, more talent,
more money, more fame, more relationships, more responsibility. When you
use what God gives you and you use it well, he says, ah,
I could trust that person. I'm going to give you more and more
and more. Discover, dedicate, develop. The fourth thing you do is
you deploy. You deploy your spiritual gifts. And you know what deploy is.
We live near Pendleton, guys are being deployed all the time to Iraq
and everywhere else. It means you put it into service, you get out
onto the field, and you actually start doing something. Romans twelve says this
verse six, we are to use our different gifts in accordance with the grace
that God has given us. For instance, if our gift is to speak
God's message, we should do it according to the faith that we have now
what's the best place to practice and develop and deploy and dedicate and discover your
gifts in a small group. In a small group, it's the safest place.
It's the testing ground. It's where I got started. It's where you
need to get started. Now you see how brilliant this plan is that God
thought up God's plan for the churches. Here's what I'll do. I'll give
every single person in the church a different gift, and then everybody has a
place, everybody has a role, everybody gets involved, everybody can contribute,
and everybody gets rewarded, not just the pastor or somebody else. Imagine what
would happen if everybody in our church, I mean, we had no spectators.
What if we had no space dictators in our church? Look, you
lose. What if we had everybody said I know my gift and I'm using
my gift. What kind of power? What kind of impact would we have
on this world? We would be unstoppable, unstoppable if everybody discovered, dedicated,
developed, and deployed their gifts. Now let's close this, let's review,
turn it back over and on the front side, look at these four
gifts again that God's given you the gift of forgiveness, the gift of eternal
life, the gift of his spirit, and the gift of special abilities.
He gives those to you the moment you step across the line. Which of
these gifts are still unwrapped by you? Which of these gifts do you need
to unwrap? If you had bought an expensive gift for a friend and you
took it over to them, and a year latery you went over their house
and they hadn't even bothered on wrap it, you'd be hurt. In fact,
you'd be offended. God has put some gifts in your life, and
he says, I want you to unwrap each of these. And he says,
when you accept my greatest gift, God so loved the world that he
gave his only begotten son, he said, you get all these other gifts,
and there's not a better time to receive than right now. Let's bow
our heads. Would you pray this prayer? Dear God, today I accept
your free gift of forgiveness. Thank you for forgiving everything I've ever done wrong.
I'm putting my trust in your grace. Dear God, today I accept
your free gift of eternal life. In Jesus Christ because of what he did
for me, I know I can't earn my way to heaven. Dear God,
I accept the free gift of your spirit into my life. Live through
me and fill me with your love and joy and peace and patience. And
God, I accept the gift of special abilities that you've put in my life.
Help me to develop them, to discover them, to dedicate them,
to use them, to be the person you made me to be. If
you've never invited Christ in your life, said Jesus Christ, today, I
invite you into my life and I accept your gifts in your name. I
pray Amen. Hi everybody, this is Rick and I hope you enjoyed today's
broadcast. You know, if you just prayed that prayer for the very first
time, or you just recommitted your life to Jesus again today, would you
let me know about it. There's something real about sharing your commitment. So
write me Rick at pass dot com and say, Rick, I prayed that
prayer of commitment. I gave my life to Christ. And I'll send you
some material that'll help you on your journey with Jesus. And I'll also pray
for you. God bless you. What a great message from Pastor Rick,
I hope it touched you just like it touched me today. And now let's
end our show with a closing thought from Rick. If you've been blessed by
this message today, here's what I want you to do. Share it,
tell somebody about it now. There's a lot of great ways you can share
Daily Hope. One of the easiest is by posting it on social media on
Facebook or Twitter or LinkedIn or Instagram. But you'll find a share button today
next to the message on my website. If you'd like to share this broadcast,
just go to Pastororrick dot com, click on the listen tap. There
you'll find buttons where you can share the message by email, social media,
or WhatsApp. That's Pastor Rick. We hope you'll join us next time as
we continue to look into God's word for our daily hope. And this program
is sponsored by Pastorick's Daily Hope and your generous financial support.